Investigating Attitudes Towards China English Accent among Undergraduate Students in Mainland China
These authors contributed equally.
- DOI
- 10.2991/aebmr.k.220405.077How to use a DOI?
- Keywords
- China English Accent; Second Language Acquisition; Language Attitude; Identity Construction
- Abstract
The China English (CE) accent, as an accent of English, has been traditionally investigated from an “inner-circle” perspective and compared with standard varieties. Under such a perspective, researchers often reported the negative attitudes and less preferences towards the CE accent. However, the concepts of “World Englishes” and “English as a lingua franca” have been popularized in recent years, and more and more studies have found positive attitudes towards the CE accent among English learners in China nowadays. Therefore, this research aims to serve as an empirical study to investigate the language attitudes towards the CE accent among current University students in China.The present study applies both questionnaires and interviews as research methods. A questionnaire of 22 questions was firstly conducted among 63 respondents to obtain an overall trend of language attitudes towards the CE accent, followed by the interviews among 3 participants to explore the in-depth factors influencing the attitudes. The results of the questionnaires suggest that the respondents hold mixed attitudes towards the CE accent: although the preference towards native varieties still exists, they tend to show a certain degree of positive attitudes as well as acceptance of the local accent. Thematic analysis of the interview also indicates that the acceptance of the CE accent could be related to both the identity construction and the influence of globalization, while the preference of standard accents may be affected by exonormatively orientation, the Chinese Education system, as well as the social norm.
- Copyright
- © 2022 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press International B.V.
- Open Access
- This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license.
Cite this article
TY - CONF AU - Jingyu Qiao AU - Huijun Song AU - Chenxi Xu PY - 2022 DA - 2022/04/29 TI - Investigating Attitudes Towards China English Accent among Undergraduate Students in Mainland China BT - Proceedings of the 2022 7th International Conference on Social Sciences and Economic Development (ICSSED 2022) PB - Atlantis Press SP - 466 EP - 473 SN - 2352-5428 UR - https://doi.org/10.2991/aebmr.k.220405.077 DO - 10.2991/aebmr.k.220405.077 ID - Qiao2022 ER -